If the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, had cared to browse Twitter yesterday, he might have seen his own mush staring glumly from a mocked-up copy of The Book Thief, the strapline reading “Nastiness Beyond Words”. This is a play on Grayling banning prisoners from receiving books from the outside world, a decision which seems about as progressive and enlightening as walking into a country house and bricking up all the windows.

It goes without saying that criminals don’t feature highly on the nation’s sympathy list — “did Mr B.Urglar not get his new John Grisham, then? Oh, boo-hoo” — but most of